My introduction to the now internationally renowned Sundance Film Festival began in the early 1990s with an invitation to bring graduate students interested in environmental and science communication to screenings in the mountains of Utah. No cost, and I selected freely from the program’s somewhat brief information for scheduled films. For a decade, the experience became an anticipated winter semester experience in learning how to effectively include film in communication efforts. After I retired from academe, I was encouraged to continue my own coverage – commentary on the festival’s films – by several journal editors on whose boards I served. This year reinforced my sense of how far independent filmmakers have come in bringing critically needed information to worldwide audiences. Climate change’s impact on the planet and the importance of science is evident in both documentaries and feature narratives. And importantly, independent filmmakers have achieved increased distribution improving the availability of their work.
I suspect the strongest homage to the importance of science at the Sundance Film Festival this year retold the exposé of a promising medical device sham. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley tells the story of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who became a billionaire until whistle blowers in her labs revealed the absence of verifiable science results and reliable engineering technology in the manufacturing of a better way to test human blood. The initially overhyped story of a young woman’s success was eventually overturned in an investigative report by The Wall Street Journal. Not just bad science but no science. Following close behind in stressing the need to attend to science, The Sound of Silence tells a compelling story of a devoted musicologist in New York City with a theory of how to calibrate sounds in homes and surroundings to adjust human moods. His “house tuner” idea markets well in the world of commerce, but fails to meet data, publication and peer-review standards.
These two intelligent and worthy starting ideas that skip the essential steps in scientific validation were among Robert Redford’s 34th lauded independent films event held in Park City, Utah early this year. The Science Feature Film Award, announced prior to the festival, went to The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, a U.K. film supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Netflix. The film, based on a true story and shot in Malawi, uses subtitles in order to allow the story to be told by actors in their native language. To save his village from famine as changing weather prevents a successful harvest, a young boy encouraged by his teacher reads library books on energy to find a way to provide well water to the fields. I wondered what might happened to the windmill driven device if climate change impacted the stored rain water. Hopefully, no worry needed. The young man has gone on to complete a degree at Dartmouth, and coauthored the book about his effort providing the basis for the filmscript.
National Geographic Documentary Films acquired the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary winner Sea of Shadows. The film tells the ongoing story of a rescue mission to save a collapsing ecosystem and with it, the vaquita porpoise, the most endangered and elusive whale on earth. A team of more than 90 international scientists, high-tech Sea Shepard conservationists, investigative journalists, undercover agents and the Mexican Navy battle Mexican drug cartels and Chinese mafia traffickers to save the last remaining vaquita and salvage the Sea of Cortez ecosystem. A native species of fish, the totoaba, are being poached at an alarming rate because of a superstitious belief among some in China that the fish swim bladders, which cost more per ounce than gold, possess miraculous healing powers. Although the bladders are used in traditional Chinese medicine, they have no proven curative properties or medicinal value. Nicknamed the “cocaine of the sea,” these extremely rare fish have triggered a multimillion-dollar black market that threatens not only their existence, but virtually all marine life in the region including the endangered vaquita caught in nets used to capture the totoaba. The rescue mission led by Drs. Cynthia Smith and Lorenzo Rojas-Braco is attempting to create a sanctuary for the remaining vaquita. At screening time, only 15 vaquita remained. Efforts to collect DNA for possible cloning are now being considered.
Among other science-based documentaries, Honeyland deepens worldwide attention and concern over the ongoing threat to bees. In a mountain region deep within the Balkans, a desperate woman faced with extreme poverty is a sole survivor in her family and now the caregiver for her ailing mother, both living in a thatched roof house without electricity or running water. She's the last in a long line of Macedonian wild beekeepers, eking out a living farming honey to be sold in a city a four-hour walk away. In the story, her somewhat peaceful existence is thrown into upheaval by the arrival of an itinerant family with seven rambunctious children and a herd of cattle. The newcomer facing his own family’s survival needs watches the woman’s methods and modest success from selling the honey from her hives, some deep in the surrounding forest or high up mountain cliffs. His own efforts to establish hives breaks the rules, exploits nature’s sustainability needs and he fails. The battle between humankind and nature, and this glimpse at a fast disappearing way of life, offer compelling testimony to extraordinary resilience, cultural history, and the current conflict between humans and nature.
Another documentary telling the story of efforts to save species from disappearing, Tigerland, like many films on this year’s program, had been picked up for distribution before screening at the festival. Aired on the Discovery Channel in late March, tigers once abundant in the jungles of India and now facing extinction have been the focus of a forest officer for decades. The effort to save the species is now also being carried on at great risk in Far East Russia by the guardians of the last Siberian tigers.
Then, there was an unexpected thought-provoking sci-fi feature sure to connect with audiences here and abroad. Netflix acquired the North American rights to I Am Mother from Australia. The thought-provoking feature film debut is based on a story written by the film’s director Grant Sputore and Michael Lloyd Green. Although a sci-fi thriller about a teenage girl, who is the first of a new generation of humans to be raised by Mother, a robot designed to repopulate the earth after the extinction of humankind, the science at its core is credible. Robotics are clearly advancing into our future. The unique relationship between a futuristic robot and her human daughter culled from a lab of preserved embryos, is threatened when an injured stranger (Academy Award-winning internationally known star Hillary Swank) arrives with news that calls into question everything the daughter has been told about the outside world and Mother’s intentions. Sci-fi, while attracting a more diverse audience, raises reasonable questions, challenging viewers to think without over-fictionalizing science boundaries.
I am most impressed with Anthropocene: The Human Epoch from Canadian-based directors Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky. The documentary premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year and earned a Spotlight screening on this year’s Sundance program. The film is destined to be an excellent educational tool for understanding how we got to this new planetary era. Our current geological epoch, with the new label proposed by members of the 10-year multiple disciplinary Anthropocene Working Group, is believed to have begun mid-twentieth century with humans as the primary cause of permanent planetary change. Filmed in Russia, Germany, China, Kenya, Europe and the U.S. to document the evidence of human planetary domination, a complimentary augmented reality experience (art show) and a book are in the works. Art and science coming together for a “we’re all in this together” rather than polemic message.
With the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock holding steady at two minutes before midnight and carbon emission increasing, the need for science communication has never been more urgent. Films coming from festivals rather than Hollywood offer educators and advocates of understanding and acting on critical environmental issues a far-reaching, impactful tool. Go to sundance.org for more information.
AEEC Editorial Board
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